


most treasured possession

by epoenine



Category: Original Work
Genre: Demons, Multi, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 10:36:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5287433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epoenine/pseuds/epoenine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The view from Damien’s window is not that great. It overlooks a beautiful field, and beyond that, mountains that climb towards the sky, but the fields are filled with the damned and the mountains rise up to the black swirling mass of clouds and everything is on fire.<br/>Damien keeps the curtains drawn most of the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	most treasured possession

The view from Damien’s window is not that great. It overlooks a beautiful field, and beyond that, mountains that climb towards the sky, but the fields are filled with the damned and the mountains rise up to the black swirling mass of clouds and everything is on fire.

Damien keeps the curtains drawn most of the time.

To say that he isn’t like the others would be the truth. Sure, he tempts the innocent and devours souls, but it’s not like he _enjoys_ doing it. It’s his job, and just like any other employee, he despises it.

However, his boss has sunken eyes and horns that curl from the top of his head, so he doesn’t put up much of a fight. It pays the bills, at least.

The day is turning out to be nice, Damien reasons. There aren’t _that_ many orbs of fire raining from the sky. He’s seen worse, of course--ash covering everything around them, bones crunching under their feet as they walk, winds that blow smoke which claw at their lungs.

“He would like to speak with you,” says the secretary, her talons scraping across the desk she sits at. She has leathery wings that curl around her shoulders like an old cloak, beady red eyes, stringy hair falling around her face.

Damien draws in a deep breath--whatever he wants to speak about, it can’t be good. He pulls himself together before pushing the frosted glass doors open, exposing the boss, who’s hunched over, hastily filling out paperwork.

“Good morning, sir,” Damien greets.

“You’re not meeting the quota,” the boss replies, bluntly. He looks grim, endless black eyes staring right through him. “I’m afraid if you don’t make up what’s lost, we’ll have to burn you with the rest of the damned. Is that clear?” Damien only nods. “You’ll go upstairs and you won’t come back until I’m satisfied with your work. I would try possession, Damien. Terrify some humans, and you’ll be back down here in no time.”

Swallowing past the growing lump in his throat, Damien shuffles back out the door. The secretary presses her sharp claws into his back and pushes him into the stairwell before he’s even able to grab his coat.

Upstairs, it’s a lot less hot. He supposes that’s reasonable, being on Earth instead of Hell and all. The screams of the damned are muffled by the roar of the wind and the hum of life around him.

He could get used to this.

The subway is crowded, but that was expected, especially in New York City. There are plenty of humans around him that he could tempt, and the boss would be appeased. As he reaches into their mind, he finds nothing worthwhile.

There’s a young man to the right of him who is thinking about slipping his hands into unsuspecting pockets. Further than that, there is a middle-aged woman who is very close to cheating on her husband. It would be so easy to give each of them the final push.

Damien doesn’t want easy.

When it comes down to it, he’s finding out life is much more enjoyable up here. He’d rather stay than go back down to where it’s unbearably hot and miserable. His headaches have lessened quite a bit without the constant screams in his ears.

Right across from him, a young girl presses her lips together like she’s trying desperately not to laugh. Damien looks into what she’s thinking. He’s immediately amused.

 _Who wears sunglasses on the subway?_ she thinks to herself, covering up the small laugh with a cough. It’s only then that Damien realizes she’s talking about him. He stares at his reflection in the glass and notices the form he’s taken--someone ruggedly handsome, he muses, with dark stubble covering his white skin and blood red lips and sunglasses that hide his impossibly blue eyes.

 _God, he’s kind of creepy_. Her eyes slip past him and she focuses on looking the other way. _He caught me staring, he caught me staring, he caught_ \--

Damien’s laughter bursts out of him.

 _What is his problem?_ her thoughts say. She shifts, obviously uncomfortable, and tries to act like she’s doing something on her phone.

Damien follows her home and slithers inside her mind. It’s warm and comfortable, soft as velvet--nice, unlike some other minds he’s inhabited over the years. He notes that her apartment is the same, that its relaxed atmosphere puts her at ease.

She carries him around in her conscience obliviously, getting ready to retire for the night. When she walks into the bathroom, Damien gets to work.

The toothbrush is cleaning her teeth as her reflection’s eyes turn entirely black in her head. Instead of letting out a terrified scream, she spits into the sink and says, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The reflection goes back to normal and she rolls her eyes.

In the morning, when a looming sense of being watched is held over her, all she says is, “I can’t deal with this today, I have work to do.”

Admittedly, Damien is amused. No one has ever outright refused to give him the satisfaction of being horrified.

While he waits for the perfect time to drag her out of her bed in the middle of the night, Damien educates himself. The woman he’s possessing is named Evangeline, which is just comical, with all things considered. She works as a secretary for a law firm, but she has no leathery wings or talons or beady eyes, unlike the harpy at his own workplace. FInally, she doesn’t put up with anything--even demons who’ve politely waited for the right time to let it be known that she’s possessed.

Eva is beautiful. Damien knows that much, he’s looked through her eyes into a mirror enough times to know this. She has dark skin and darker hair that falls in waves to the middle of her back. Her brows are thick and her eyelashes are thicker. She is the opposite of a blonde and blue-eyed angel.

Damien tries again with the possession when she’s on her way home from a long day at work, riding the subway. He lets her hear whispers of the dead, the agonizing screams of the damned, the howls of the condemned.

Her eyes flutter shut and with a wince she thinks, _No, not today. I have a headache. Save it for later._

Listening to her wishes, he burrows deep inside her mind. He’ll wait for the right time. After all, he values consent the most out of the devil’s companions. Damien is nothing but a gentleman.

It’s dark on the streets of New York. Normally, Damien would love this, would revel in it. Right now, the only thing he can feel is fear for Eva. She walks past a group of men who whistle at her like a dog, and, being the strong woman Damien knows her to be, she turns around.

The men laugh in her face. Their sly smirks slip right off their faces as Damien does his worst. Blood drips out of her eye sockets and her neck bends at a truly horrifying angle. The men are struck silent and they stumble back inside the bar they came out of.

At home, Eva stares into the mirror for a long time. She asks out loud, “What the hell was that?”

Her reflection smiles sweetly back at her and answers, “I was only helping.”

Eva is speechless for a moment and she goes into hysterics. “Thanks, then,” she says between gasps of insanity before flicking the lights off and getting into bed.

Things start looking up. That weekend, Eva curls up with a bowl of popcorn and watches an atrocious horror movie. The plot is weak and the acting is even weaker. The whole point of watching the movie, though, is to be entertained by how ridiculously bad it is.

 _Terrifying_ , Damien drawls inside her mind. His voice is his own. Eva stays completely still for all of three seconds before snorting at his comment..  

Damien keeps up the commentary. _That is not how a summoning works_ , he tells her, and when he sees the horrible representation of a demon, he says, _and I definitely don’t look like that._

She laughs through the whole movie and Damien has never felt more pleased.

That night, before she sleeps, as she’s lying in her bed staring at the cracks on her ceiling, she thinks, I have no idea what’s wrong with me, but I don’t have any objections.

Another incident doesn’t happen until a week later when Eva is ordering a pizza. She starts to put in an order for a medium with mushrooms, green peppers, and olives, but Damien keeps her from saying the words.

 _What are you doing?_ she thinks at him, obviously frustrated.  “One minute,” she tells the girl on the end of the phone, who hums an affirmative.

Damien tells her, _Get the one with pepperoni and sausage_.

 _No_ , she says. Damien has the audacity to be amused.

 _You want it_ , Damien urges. _You love pepperoni and sausage on pizza._

She argues, _I do not._

 _Get it for me_ , _then_ , he tries, and then adds on, _please?_

Damien can feel Eva roll her eyes. “A medium with pepperoni and sausage,” she orders, grudgingly. After a moment she says, “Green peppers, too.” It’s too bad no one is there to see her vicious, victorious smirk.

Eva eats the pizza on the couch watching the news and Damien savors every bite. He hasn’t had pizza since he possessed a college student. For her third piece, she picks off the green peppers and eats it just for him.

The next night, when Eva falls asleep reading a book on the couch, Damien controls her unconscious body and walks her to her bed, tucking her in. Not because he feels anything other than the need to terrify her, of course. The only pleasure he’s getting out of that is the fact that Eva will wake up in her bed and not know how she got there. It’s the few seconds of horror that’s doing it for him.

Damien pretends the small smile Eva wears throughout the morning doesn’t make warmth bloom in their chest.

Soon after this, when Damien awakens in Eva’s mind, he finds her with her head in her hands at the kitchen table, a stack of mail in front of her. She thinks, desperately, _you can’t scare the landlord into giving me an extension on rent, can you?_

Eva can feel the sympathy radiating from him inside her heart. They’re both quiet as Eva makes her way to the nearest ATM. Damien, silent with the focus of devising a plan, and Eva, silent with the gloom curling inside her.

The machine is old, and maybe that’s what they can blame it on when this is all over, but Damien makes the machine spit out more money than what Eva had withdrawn from her savings account. She checks and makes sure she didn’t just press a wrong button--no, her money is all there.

Eva’s mood changes so quickly that it makes Damien feel light-headed. Eva thanks God, and once she feels the bitterness from Damien, she thinks, _sorry, I’m sorry. Thank you._

Her wide smile is pure satisfaction for Damien.

Later that day, while Eva is taking a shower, Damien scrawls on the fogged bathroom mirror in eerie handwriting, _Chinese takeout for dinner tonight?_

He feels her agreement when she reads it.

After dinner, Eva falls asleep curled up on the couch again. Damien lifts the blanket and gently pulls it around Eva’s shoulders.

Remarkably, Eva tries to date while being possessed. He comes over for dinner--Eva actually _cooked_ , which she never does for the two of them. Damien can tell he’s not her type. Blond and baby-faced, he notes, bitterly. Like a cherub.

Eva can feel Damien’s unease twisting in her stomach throughout the entire night. Towards the end of the date, as the man tries to hold Eva’s hand, Damien makes the lights flicker so much that the bulbs burst. The doors on the cabinet open and close spontaneously.

It’s a paranormal tantrum.

“I think it’s best if you leave,” Eva tells the man, who’s looking downright terrorized. Damien is smug and it makes Eva all the more mad. “Electricity is really bad here, I keep forgetting to mention it to my landlord. I might just call an electrician myself. Must be the wires,” she says, ushering him towards the door.

“What about the cabinets?” the man asks anxiously.

“Open window letting in a draft,” she dismisses, shrugging and closing the door before he has a chance to say goodbye.

Eva takes a few moments to gather herself. Then, she starts yelling as she brushes broken glass into a dustpan. “I cannot believe you!” she shouts at him. “I thought you weren’t going to pull that kind of stuff anymore.”

 _I don’t know what came over me_ , he thinks at her.

“Just because you possess me doesn’t mean you _actually possess_ _me_ ,” she states. “I had my own life before all this happened, you know.”

 _I’m sorry_ , his thoughts say. He does feel regretful.

“You didn’t feel sorry before,” Eva argues. She throws her hands up in the air. “Sometimes I’d wish you’d just let me have a normal life.”

She sounds sincere enough that Damien curls in on himself until he’s only a spot of conscience in her mind. Her thoughts are muffled like this and the hurtful truth is easier to take.

Damien leaves once she falls asleep. He exits the comfort of her mind into the darkness of the city. Before he knows it, he’s back in Hell.

It’s so much more hotter than he remembers. More miserable, too, without Eva’s constant thoughts brightening his day. His sulks and does the things he’s seen in movies. Eating chocolate--except there’s none of that here, so he settles for charred flesh--crying--except demons lack that particular ability, so he lays in bed and stares unblinking at the ceiling--generally obsessing over the person he’s lost--that, he does do successfully.

When he can’t stand it, he snatches glimpses of Eva’s life. He regrets the fact that he feels satisfaction when he learns Eva’s missing him, but he still does.

She orders pizza with mushrooms, green peppers, and olives. She hates it.

She doesn’t laugh as much when she watches movies to make fun of them. She misses Damien more instead.

She notices that the ATM machines always work. She falls behind on her rent.

Damien lets hope manifest in the pit of his stomach. Pushing open the frosted glass doors, he walks cautiously up to the boss before voicing his request. “I’d like a permanent residence upstairs.”

The boss doesn’t require an explanation. He just shoves forms at Damien and demands, “Fill this out.”

Going about his way upstairs is different now that he’s less of a demon. He has no idea what people are thinking, and that makes him extremely uncomfortable--enough that he considers giving up and going back to Hell.

It takes longer than he thought to find Eva. He has no idea how to find her, so he just lingers on subways and hopes. He even sleeps on a bench for a couple of nights, which earns him startled looks from strangers, most likely because he’s wearing his best suit and he keeps his sunglasses on no matter what.

Damien finds Eva late one night. He’s spent the entire day sneaking onto subway cars and she’s spent the entire day busy at work--she’s exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes and a downturn to her lips.

He sits down next to her. “Hello, Evangeline,” he says, mouth curling into a smile.

“I’m sorry,” she replies, alarmed, “Do I know you?”

Damien leans in and lowers his voice. “Probably, from the months I spent possessing you.” Eva gives him the same look she first gave him in the mirror and it makes affection swell in his chest. She arches her eyebrow. “Damien,” he introduces himself. “It’s nice to finally meet you after all this time.”

Eva pretends she is reluctant when she lets him back into her life, but Damien knows she’s happy to have him back. She sets up the couch for him to sleep on and makes him tea before she crosses her arms and demands answers.

“You left. With no explanation at all, you left,” she tells him, and waits for a flimsy excuse.

Damien sips from his mug and clears his throat before answering. “It had come to my attention that I’m falling in love with you,” he says. Blush burns his cheeks. “Understandably, that scared me.”

Eva laughs. “You possess people for a living and _feelings_ are what scare you?”

“Sadly enough,” he agrees with a grimace.

Again, she laughs, but she looks more forgiving. Her smile is soft and when she rolls her eyes it’s with fondness. “Bathroom’s the first door on the right.” She pauses before saying, “If you’re staying here, you’re going to pay rent. Three hundred and fifty at the end of the month, or I’m kicking you out.”

Damien’s smile is so wide that it’s embarrassing.

Over the next few days, he manages to get a job. It’s even worse than possessing humans and terrifying them to the point of madness.

He makes coffee. The only reason the manager hired him was because he wrote _former demon_ on his resume and thought he had a sense of humor.

Daily, he grits his teeth to the point of headaches because of the excited teenage girls and rude business men coming into the cafe. It’s a very trying job.

In the foam, he draws pentagons that terrify the customers. It brightens up his day.

Every Friday with Eva is spent eating their favorite pizza and watching horrible horror movies. It’s familiar, the two of them making sarcastic comments and snide remarks and laughing at each other. This time, though, Eva shoves popcorn down Damien’s shirt and falls asleep curled into his side.

Just like before, she still needs to be tucked in.

Whenever Eva is falling behind on bills and needs some extra money, Damien pickpockets the unsuspecting passengers on the subway. He’s very particular about who he’ll steal from--never the single moms who look exhausted, always the stuffy business men.

Months go by as they settle into this routine.

Of course, Eva manages to take him by surprise. They’re doing the dishes one night after dinner--he’s washing, she’s drying--and she goes still before meeting his eyes--without the sunglasses; she made him take them off the first week in and sarcastically waxed poetic about the blue of his eyes for hours.

Without any warning, she leans in and she’s kissing him and he’s getting soap suds on her shirt but neither of them care.

The small smile she wears when she pulls back grows wider as she takes him in. He’s blushing spectacularly under the fluorescent lights and his eyes can’t find anything to settle on.

“Goodnight, Damien,” Eva says, her voice a whisper, before leaving him in the middle of the kitchen to deal with the aftermath.


End file.
